[Go here for sins 1 to 4 and a bonus sin]
Sin 5. Envy
Envy makes managers do things that aren’t appropriate for the company. For example:
- Gaming the compensation system. For example, giving a higher-than-deserved performance rating in order to award a higher raise to an average employee who is high in the range.
- Empire building. Trying to add more positions that aren’t important for the company to achieve its goals.
- Copycatting. The other department head has a French-speaking assistant; I want a French-speaking assistant. Or, the other department head just reorganized; I’d better reorganize, too.
Sin 6. Greed
Some managers will try to get more of the compensation pie than they deserve. “All MY people are top performers.”
Another way managers and supervisors show the sin of greed is in their quest for information about people’s lives. This starts in the interview with questions about:
- Child care,
- Family plans,
- Church,
- Health,
- Age, and
- Any number of other non-job-related questions.
These questions are often asked innocently, but they all can cause problems if there’s a lawsuit. The court will assume that you asked the question because you wanted to use the answer in making your hiring decision.
For instance, you ask a woman about her plans for a family or need for child care, and then you hire a man who wasn’t asked the questions. The woman sues, and the court wants to know, why did you ask that question?
And then there’s the overly eager prying into employees’ health issues. As they say, “You can’t unring the bell.” If you later want to take action against the employee, there will be a certain amount of protection around him or her. You may be accused of discrimination on the basis of a disability.
Are class action lawyers peering at your comp practices? It’s likely, but you can keep them at bay by finding and eliminating any wage and hour violations yourself. Our editors recommend BLR’s easy-to-use FLSA Wage & Hour Self-Audit Guide. Click here for details.
Sin 7. Sloth
We don’t know any comp pros who aren’t busy, and we’d be reluctant to accuse any of sloth. But we do know many who have put basic upkeep chores on the back burner.
And one of those is managing the most basic task of compensation—wage and hour. Right now, your managers and supervisors may be wage and hour sinners. They’re trying some inventive approaches like working people off the clock or through their unpaid lunch period. How can you tell if they are doing it right or sinning?
There’s only one way to find out what sort of wage and hour shenanigans are going on—regular audits.
To accomplish a successful audit, BLR’s editors recommend a unique checklist-based program called the Wage & Hour Self-Audit Guide. Why are checklists so great? It is because they’re completely impersonal, and they force you to jump through all the necessary hoops, one by one. They also ensure consistency in how operations are conducted. And that’s vital in compensation, where it’s all too easy to land in court if you discriminate in how you treat one employee over another.
Experts say that it’s always better to do your own audit and fix what needs fixing before authorities do their audit. Most employers agree, but they get bogged down in how to start, and in the end, they do nothing. There are, however, aids to making the FLSA self-auditing relatively easy.
What our editors strongly recommend is BLR’s Wage & Hour Self-Audit Guide. It is both effective and easy to use, and it even won an award for those features. Here are some reasons our customers like it:
- Plain English. Drawing on 30 years of experience in creating plain-English compliance guides, our editors have translated FLSA’s endless legalese into understandable terms.
- Step by step. The book begins with a clear narrative of what the FLSA is all about. That’s followed by a series of checklists that utilize a simple question-and-answer pattern about employee duties to find the appropriate classification.
All you need to avoid exempt/nonexempt classification and overtime errors, now in BLR’s award-winning FLSA Wage & Hour Self-Audit Guide. Find out more.
- Complete. Many self-audit programs focus on determining exempt/nonexempt status. BLR’s Wage & Hour Self-Audit Guide also adds checklists on your policies and procedures and includes questioning such practices as whether your break time and travel time are properly accounted for. Nothing falls through the cracks because the cracks are covered.
- Convenient. Our personal favorite feature: a list of common job titles marked “E” or “NE” for exempt/nonexempt status. It’s a huge work saver.
- Up to Date. If you are using an old self-auditing program, you could be in for trouble. Substantial revisions in the FLSA went into effect in 2004. Anything written before that date is hopelessly—and expensively—obsolete. BLR’s Wage & Hour Self-Audit Guide includes all the changes.